Jacques Louis David

Just about the only thing missing from the exhibition "Some Paintings" is an exclamation mark at the title's end. A whopping 81 paintings by 80 artists, most made recently; here is a show that wants to make a point. And it does, with wit, verve and considerable taste. If the taste is not always mine, or yours -- well, that seems to be part of the point.

Just about the only thing missing from the exhibition "Some Paintings" is an exclamation mark at the title's end. A whopping 81 paintings by 80 artists, most made recently; here is a show that wants to make a point. And it does, with wit, verve and considerable taste. If the taste is not always mine, or yours -- well, that seems to be part of the point.

A rudimentary description of Jacques-Louis David, the Neoclassical artistic genius, casts him as the chief image maker along the Enlightenment road to the French Revolution. He's the one whose Greco-Roman parables of noble civic duty and wrenching personal sacrifice to national ideals, painted as grand episodes from historical theater, so impressed Thomas Jefferson when the American went to Paris in the 1780s.

One hundred and ninety-one years after it was created, a year after heirs of the original owner decided to sell it at auction, four months after the Los Angeles County Museum of Art snapped it up for $2.7 million, Jacques-Louis David's "Portrait of Jean-Pierre Delahaye" is making its public debut. The startlingly realistic painting of a white-haired attorney with an equivocal gaze is the centerpiece of a small exhibition opening Thursday at LACMA.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art snagged the top item in a Paris auction, paying $2.7 million for a portrait by Jacques-Louis David on Thursday at Christie's. "Portrait of Jean-Pierre Delahaye" -- a dramatic painting of a white-haired, white-shirted gentleman on a dark background -- was the star attraction in a $9-million sale of 155 Old Master and 19th century paintings. "It's a very big deal for us," said LACMA Director Michael Govan.

One hundred and ninety-one years after it was created, a year after heirs of the original owner decided to sell it at auction, four months after the Los Angeles County Museum of Art snapped it up for $2.7 million, Jacques-Louis David's "Portrait of Jean-Pierre Delahaye" is making its public debut. The startlingly realistic painting of a white-haired attorney with an equivocal gaze is the centerpiece of a small exhibition opening Thursday at LACMA.

February 25, 1987 | Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

The J. Paul Getty Museum paid $4 million Tuesday for a painting by the 19th-Century French artist Jacques-Louis David that sold for less than $4,000 in 1950. Bidding for "Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis"--called by Sotheby's New York auctioneers "the most important 19th-Century painting to be offered for sale in America in a generation"--began at $1 million and progressed in less than a minute to the final record bid.

Charles Bierer Wrightsman, a retired oil executive turned philanthropist whose homes contained some of the important private art collections in the world, has died at the age of 90. Wrightsman, a benefactor and trustee of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for three decades, died Tuesday at his Manhattan home. He also maintained homes in London and Palm Beach, Fla., where he often was host to President John F. Kennedy.

A lot of yelling has gone on, here and elsewhere, about established artists leaping on the Post-Modernist bandwagon out of venal motives. There are certainly such characters, but the lemming-like universality of the trend is beginning to feel as much like historical inevitability as mere opportunism. It has happened in the past. The tough Spanish realist Francisco Zurbaran had to soften his style to meet the popularity of the sentimental Murillo.

SAN FRANCISCO -- New York artist Eve Sussman grabbed the spotlight at the 2004 Whitney Biennial with a video re-creation of Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez's 1656-57 masterpiece, "Las Meninas." Two years later she released a much more ambitious work -- an operatic, five-act video inspired by Jacques-Louis David's 1799 painting "Intervention of the Sabine Women." And now, two years after its New York opening, "The Rape of the Sabine Women" is having its West Coast premiere.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art snagged the top item in a Paris auction, paying $2.7 million for a portrait by Jacques-Louis David on Thursday at Christie's. "Portrait of Jean-Pierre Delahaye" -- a dramatic painting of a white-haired, white-shirted gentleman on a dark background -- was the star attraction in a $9-million sale of 155 Old Master and 19th century paintings. "It's a very big deal for us," said LACMA Director Michael Govan.

A rudimentary description of Jacques-Louis David, the Neoclassical artistic genius, casts him as the chief image maker along the Enlightenment road to the French Revolution. He's the one whose Greco-Roman parables of noble civic duty and wrenching personal sacrifice to national ideals, painted as grand episodes from historical theater, so impressed Thomas Jefferson when the American went to Paris in the 1780s.

The Movie: "Interview With the Vampire" The Setup: Vampires Lestat (Tom Cruise, pictured at left) and Louis (Brad Pitt, pictured at right) embark on two centuries of night-prowling bloodsucking, based on Anne Rice bestseller. After a few decades, a "daughter," Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), joins in their ravenous escapades. The Costume Designer: London-based Sandy Powell, whose credits include "Orlando," "The Crying Game" and "Caravaggio."